Sixteen diamond-set and enamelled gold chaupar games pieces and dice, Jaipur, 19th century

comprising sixteen pieces forming four groups with red, green, yellow and blue enamel grounds, all set with diamonds and decorated with floral and bird motifs, the two dice also with a floral enamelled design

U.R.B. Krishnan and M.S. Kumar, Dance of the Peacock: Jewellery Tradition of India, India, 1999, p.133, no.188 

All in overall good condition, some with minor loss of enamel decoration on surface consistent with age and use, as viewed.
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Chaupar, believed to have been created in the fourth century, is the ancestor of pachisi, and considered the national game of India. Designed for four players divided in two teams, the game is played on a board resembling a cross with four arms, each with three adjacent columns of eight squares. The sixteen games pieces are decorated in four colours: yellow, black, red and green, and each player is allotted a specific colour. The objective of the game is to move all four pieces completely around the board in an anti-clockwise direction, as decided by the throw of three long dice.

A Mewar painting depicting Maharana Jagat Singh II playing chaupar is illustrated in I.L. Finkel, “The Four-Arm Race: The Indian Game of Pachisi or Chaupar”, in Andrew Tospfield (ed.), The Art of Play: Board and Card Games of India, 2006, p. 62, fig. 63. In another famous painting from Basohli dated 1694-95, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (acc. no. 57.185.2), Shiva and Parvati are illustrated with a game of chaupar in front of them, evidently it is a game for the Gods as well as men and Kings.

A related set of sixteen gaming pieces is in the Nasser D. Khalili collection, acc. no. JLY 1129 (illustrated in P.M. Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India: The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. XVIII, 2010, p.83, no.28).